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Talk:Order of the Shadow Legion/@comment-108.170.147.95-20150606072426/@comment-45075715-20200219125852
I still find my CKOs outperforming them even with reduced weapon prof -- I think being able to equip them with a weapon with crazy fast attack speed like strange ebony saber or noldor runesword makes up for the weapon prof reduction, high powerdraw and bow on mount beating throwing overall in wider ranges of scenarios, and it's not such a steep prof reduction when using DoT and such, plus we can choose better mounts than ironbred (much faster mounts like noldor spirit or more HP/armor like netherworld charger). Also slightly better armor and distributed better in rating across the body (body, head, legs), although I suspect that's the most negligible diff compared to weaponry, mount, and then superior shield (along with more skill points in shield skill) but the higher leg rating might help survive longer on mounts and higher head rating allowing the unit to survive an unlucky headshot more often. Every few exra points in armor rating can make a big diff in my experience since it can more than halve damage given the way the damage formula against armor seems to be based on subtraction rather than multiplication. The diff between 60 AR and 65 AR can be more than an ~8% difference in damage received -- it could be infinite as the 60 AR version might receive non-zero damage while the 65 AR version receives zero, the 60 AR version might get stunned with a strike, the 65 AR might receive a very low-damage graze that doesn't interrupt the unit's attack. So I am not sure about this but slightly superior armor might also make much more than a slight difference. I don't know for sure since I don't peek under the hood at the engine's implementation details very often -- I find that ruins the excitement of playing the game and formulating hypotheses about how the engine might be coded and then trying to reverse engineer and repeatedly test to see if my hypotheses hold up. Most of my fun as a commercial gamedev come from that -- trying to figure out how the game is implemented by playing/testing it as opposed to actually looking up the implementation details. I can't immerse myself like a normal player ever since I started developing games commercially but I still get a kick out of playing a game and trying to figure out how it works the hard way (without cheating and looking it up). That said, it might be in part because I favor combat beast builds in PoP over only pumping INT after level ups. I pour my level up skill points into STR and AGI on top of drinking elixirs. My own PC's profs, skills, and STR/AGI are already usually super high by the time I fully upgraded (or close) my CKOs. I don't even need dedicated STR/AGI companions for it (my PC will usually have the highest profs, attribs, and combat skills), and my CKOs using board and sword and bow reflect my own PC's gear/skill/prof choices (they're like clones of my character almost except I favor reach over speed for weapons, while I find the AI does way better with speed over reach). I see powerplaying guides focused on building late game character builds with the highest number of skill points, but I don't optimize that way. I optimize for the strongest CKO units and getting them ASAP so I favor combat beast. It matters little to me by that point that my main character is lacking in party skills let alone leadership and such when my CKO knights and sergeants are like gods on the open battlefield and siege offense/defense. With that aside, SL and CC are my favorites now until I get super-upgraded CKO knights and sergeants. Actually my CKO units are so OP that they take almost all strategy out of every scenario (open, siege defense, siege offense). SL would at least face some problems in siege scenarios without being accompanied by lots of bows/x-bows. I've had 15 of my fully-upgraded CKO knights beat over 80 Noldor and armies of over 600 in siege scenarios. One of my CKO knights can take on 4-6 Noldor and 40+ regular units (including ones with lots of high-tier), sergeant maybe half to 75% of that. It's like, "Oh, I got 18 knights and 20 sergeants, and this town has 800 in its garrison -- lets siege!" -- then end up with a victory with no casualties (maybe 1 wounded or something like that). With that aside, I'm not comparing how much time and denars I spent. I probably poured way more than 5 mil overall.